[203]. It was long supposed that this picture was the ‘Epiphany’ preserved behind the High Altar of the Church of S. Barbara, Naples, but Crowe and Cavalcaselle, History of Painting in North Italy, II, 103, pronounce this ‘a feeble and injured picture of the eighteenth century.’
[204]. Frederick of Urbino (there were not two of the name as Vasari supposes) seems to have had a bathroom decorated with secular compositions by the Flemish master. Facio, whose tract De Viris Illustribus, written in the middle of the fifteenth century, was printed at Florence in 1745, writes, p. 46, of ‘Joannes Gallicus’ (who can be identified as Jan van Eyck) who had painted certain ‘picturae nobiles’ then in the possession of Cardinal Octavianus, with ‘representations of fair women only slightly veiled at the bath.’ Such pictures were considered suitable decorations for bath chambers. There is a curious early example of mediaeval date in the Schloss Runkelstein near Botzen in the Tyrol, in the form of wall paintings round a bathroom on one side of which nude figures are seen preparing to enter the water, while on two other walls spectators of both sexes are seen looking in through an open arcade. The pictures here referred to by van Eyck are now lost, but by a curious coincidence attention has just been directed to an existing copy of one of them, of which Facio gives a special notice. The copy occurs in a painting by Verhaecht of Antwerp, 1593–1637, that represents the picture gallery of an Antwerp connoisseur at about the date 1615. There on the wall is seen hanging the van Eyck, that corresponds closely to the full description given by Facio. The painting by Verhaecht was shown at Burlington House in the Winter Exhibition, 1906–7, and in the ‘Toison d’Or’ Exhibition at Bruges in 1907. See also the Burlington Magazine, February, 1907, p. 325. It may be added that the Cardinal Octavianus mentioned above was a somewhat obscure prelate, who received the purple from Gregory XII in 1408.
[205]. The latest editors of Vasari (Opere, ed. Milanesi, I, 184) think this may be a picture in the Museum at Naples, ascribed there to an apocryphal artist ‘Colantonio del Fiore.’ Von Wurzbach says it is by a Neapolitan painter influenced by the Flemings.
[206]. Roger van der Weyden, more properly called, as by Guicciardini and by Vasari in 1568, ‘Roger of Brussels.’ In 1449 he made a journey to Italy, and stayed for a time at Ferrara, which under the rule of the art-loving Este was very hospitable to foreign craftsmen. He was in Rome in 1450 and may have visited Florence and other centres. His own style in works subsequent to this journey shows little of Italian influence.
[207]. Hans Memling. ‘No Flemish painter of note,’ remark Crowe and Cavalcaselle, Early Flemish Painters, p. 256, ‘produced pictures more attractive to the Italians than Memling.’ The Portinari, for whom Memling worked, were Florentine merchants who had a house at Bruges, the commercial connection of which with Tuscany was very close. In his Notes on Flemish Painters at the end of the Lives, Vasari says that the subject of ‘a small picture in the possession of the Duke’ which is probably the one here mentioned, was ‘The Passion of Christ.’ If this be the case, it cannot be the beautiful little Memling now in the Uffizi, No. 703, for the subject of this is ‘The Virgin and Child.’ It might possibly however be the panel of ‘The Seven Griefs,’ a Passion picture in the Museum at Turin. On the other hand, Passavant thought the Turin panel was the ‘Careggi’ picture that Vasari goes on to mention. See Note on p. 268 of Crowe and Cavalcaselle’s work.
[208]. The German editors of Vasari identified Lodovico da Luano with the well-known painter Dierich Bouts of Louvain, but the name Ludovico (Chlodwig, ‘Warrior of Renown’) is not the same etymologically as Dierich (Theodoric, ‘Prince of the People’). It is to be noted that in Guicciardini we find a mention of ‘Dirich da Louano,’ who is undoubtedly Dierich Bouts (the surname is derived from St. Rombout the patron of Haarlem, where the painter, who is also called ‘Dirick van Haarlem’ [see below], was born) and also a mention of Vasari’s ‘Ludovico da Luvano.’ A scrutiny however of the sentence in Guicciardini, where the last-mentioned name occurs, shows that it is copied almost verbatim from our text of Vasari. (Vasari [1550]:—‘Similmente Lodovico da Luano & Pietro Christa, & maestro Martino, & ancora Giusto da Guanto, che fece la tavola della comunione de’l Duca d’ Vrbino, & altre pitture; & Vgo d’ Anuersa, che fe la tauola di Sancta Maria Nuoua di Fiorenza’; Guicciardini:—‘Seguirono a mano a mano Lodouico da Louano, Pietro Crista, Martino d’ Holanda, & Giusto da Guanto, che fece quella nobil’ pittura della comunione al Duca d’ Vrbino, & dietro a lui venne Vgo d’ Anuersa, che fece la bellissima tauola, che si vede a Firenze in santa Maria nuoua’). Vasari is accordingly responsible for this ‘Ludovico da Luano,’ whose name is duly chronicled in von Wurzbach’s ‘Niederländisches Künstler-Lexicon, Leipzig, 1906, II, p. 69, on the authority of Guicciardini alone, and who is called in M. Ruelens’s annotations to the French edition of Crowe and Cavalcaselle ‘Louys de Louvain (peintre encore inconnu).’ Subsequently Guicciardini mentions also a ‘Dirich d’ Harlem,’ who can be none other than the same Dierick Bouts, and Vasari, as a return favour, copies back all three Diericks into his Notes at the end of the edition of 1568. The first ‘Ludovico’ may be merely due to a mistake in the text of Vasari carelessly adopted by Guicciardini. Vasari’s copyist may have written ‘Ludovico’ in place of the somewhat similar ‘Teodorico.’ There was however a certain Ludovicus Dalmau or Dalman (D’Alamagna?), a Flemish painter who worked at Barcelona in Spain about 1445 (von Wurzbach, sub voce) who may be meant, though there is no indication of a connection between him and Louvain.
[209]. Pietro Crista is of course Petrus Christus or Christi of Bruges, an imitator, though as Mr Weale has shown not an actual pupil, of the van Eycks. Von Wurzbach says that Guicciardini was the first to mention his name, but Vasari in 1550 already knows him. As an explanation of the surname it has been suggested that the artist’s father may have had a reputation as a painter or carver of Christ-figures, so that Petrus would be called ‘son of the Christ-man.’
[210]. The name Martin belongs to painters of two generations in Ghent, and von Wurzbach thinks it is the earlier of these, Jan Martins, apparently a scholar of the van Eycks, who is referred to here, and called by Guicciardini (see above), and by Vasari in 1568, ‘Martino d’ Holanda.’ There was a later and better known Martin of Ghent called ‘Nabor Martin.’ The more famous ‘Martins,’ ‘of Heemskerk,’ and ‘Schongauer,’ when referred to by Vasari, have more distinct indications of their identity. See, e.g., Opere, V, 396.
[211]. Justus of Ghent worked at Urbino, where he finished the altar piece referred to by Vasari in 1474. The ‘other pictures’ may be a series of panels painted for the library at Urbino, on which Crowe and Cavalcaselle have an interesting paragraph, op. cit. p. 180.
[212]. Hugo of Antwerp is Hugo van der Goes, whose altar piece painted for S. Maria Nuova at Florence has now been placed in the Uffizi.